Five students of our Applied Computer Science won in the Hack The Climate hackathon. The team, named The Bills and composed of Kacper Grobelny, Wiktor Stankiewicz, Jakub Ner, Damian Sawko, Mikołaj Jastrzębski, created an interactive map of the town Bieruń, winning EUR 10,000, as well as a contract with the Polish Development Fund and with the city of Bieruń. Congratulations!

The objective in the Hack The Climate hackathon organized by the Polish Development Fund and the Norwegian Nordic Edge organization was to develop new technological solutions in the fight against climate change. The competition took place online on the weekend of 24-26 November and gathered over a hundred programmers who were looking for solutions to the climate challenges of cities such as: Bieruń, Rzeszów, Setesdal and Stavanger and Sulejówek.

The team from our Faculty chose one of four challenges – to develop a platform for the city of Bieruń. The town reported a need for a tool that would allow consultations on the vision of the town's development to be performed together with its residents. The platform would also enable interactive planning of changes to the urban space and the location of future investments.

Our students proposed an interactive map of Bieruń – an online platform providing space in which the town residents could express their opinions and, among others, learn about events and investments planned by the town. The application would facilitate communication between the residents and the town authorities, as well as raise awareness of initiatives in the town. The implementation of the map would result in a greater involvement of residents and allow the city to operate more efficiently in response to local challenges.

– We have enriched our solution with AR technology, AI, 3D models, an application for calculating the BAF index and a social aspect enabling the town to inform users about local events – explains Mikołaj Jastrzębski from The Bills..

The team won EUR 10,000 and a five-month contact with the Polish Development Fund and Bieruń. The application will be developed and implemented over the next few months, and then it will be presented in Norway at the Nordic Smart City Expo conference.

This is the first such great success of The Bills from our Faculty. Kacper Grobelny, Wiktor Stankiewicz, Jakub Ner, Damian Sawko and Mikołaj Jastrzębski have so far participated in a number of hackathons, but as they say,

– We had been sort of cursed – we had always come in second.

The students of Applied Computer Science refer to such hackathons as the EBEC – European BEST Engineering Contest, where they faced many case-study challenges and placed 2nd at the national stage in Gdańsk. It was similar with Best Hacks 2023, in which the team developed applications that would encourage company employees to lead a healthy lifestyle and take care of their mental health. The next hackathon was PFR Hack To React 2023, during which they designed an application for Dąbrowa Górnicza that calculated BAF indicators and took… 2nd place at the national stage.

We are happy to see our students finally with the well-earned first victory. We keep our fingers crossed for further successes!